{"id":6137,"date":"2016-10-31T06:29:31","date_gmt":"2016-10-31T10:29:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=6137"},"modified":"2016-11-10T11:02:46","modified_gmt":"2016-11-10T16:02:46","slug":"american-quartet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=6137","title":{"rendered":"***American Quartet"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"lincoln,

photo: Aaron Vowels<\/p><\/div>\n

By Warren Adler, narrated by Julie Griffin \u2013 You can\u2019t help but enjoy the clever criminal lurking behind the scenes in this 1982 classic. Set in Washington, DC, around 1980 (it was a presidential election year, so thereabouts), a time when I lived in the Nation\u2019s Capital, this police procedural includes many reminders of that place and time.<\/p>\n

The novel\u2019s protagonist, Fiona Fitzgerald, has abandoned the path expected of her as the daughter of a US Senator and serves as a Sergeant in the DC Metropolitan Police Department\u2019s homicide division\u2014a white woman in what was then a black male bastion. (This is one place where 35 years has made a profound difference. Today, DC\u2019s mayor is a woman, its just-retiring police commissioner is a white woman, and the department is trending white.)<\/p>\n

Fitzgerald and her partner face a baffling set of murders, but the reader\/listener knows something the police do not: the perpetrator is recreating, to the extent practicable, the assassinations of past U.S. presidents on their anniversary dates. After the first two \u201ccopycat crimes\u201d (James Garfield and William McKinley), you anticipate the perpetrator\u2019s inevitable further recreations (John F. Kennedy and Abraham Lincoln)\u2014with a growing sense of dread. Garfield, McKinley, Kennedy, Lincoln: the American quartet.<\/p>\n

I found it hard to believe no one in the police, the media, or the local citizenry\u2014full of \u00a0history and political buffs\u2014tumbled to the similarities between current and past events, especially after the two deaths on November 22, the anniversary of JFK\u2019s murder. Adler makes the point that Americans are oblivious about their history, and I\u2019ll give him that. But, thanks to television, the Kennedy killing is seared into the national memory, especially in Washington DC. In 1980, it was only 17 years in the past. About how long ago Y2K is now.<\/p>\n

Fitzgerald (sharing a name with the martyred president) may be distracted by her love life. Her politician boyfriend faces a tough reelection battle in Queens. His congressional district\u2019s demographics have moved away from him, and he needs cash (some new ideas also would help). What might save him is the financial support of failed Senatorial candidate Thaddeus Remington, a wealthy player in the Washington party circuit. I liked all the politics and, if there were some aspects of the story that seemed far-fetched, the time-capsule attributes were strong.<\/p>\n

Listening to a book is a different experience than reading it. Most of the principal characters in this book are men, and Julie Griffin does a good job with them. Yet, I kept checking my iPod to make sure I hadn\u2019t inadvertently clicked a 1.5 reading speed. Also, I wonder that there\u2019s no one (the equivalent of an editor) to correct startling mis-readings. The point isn\u2019t to ding the narrator on the kind of mistake any of us might make from time to time, but to emphasize that such persistent errors\u2014like egregious typographical errors\u2014take the listener out of the story.
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